Infinity N5 - Initial Plans and Vibes

 

The new edition of Infinity, N5, released earlier this week. There's a lot to absorb as a player, and its going to take a while before I think I've got there. Now, I own quite a lot of factions, so I had a bit of a think about what I'm going to do first...

Our club has an escalation league starting up, and after writing one test list, I've decided to start N5 with my Shasvastii. There's not a huge amount of changes, but one of the more powerful profiles, the Speculo, has had some of its rules made a little less powerful, while half a dozen less used profiles have all had an overhaul. Seeing how a familiar faction has changed will be a good way for me to get a handle on the new edition.

I do want to shuffle into vanilla Combined Army in the future too. I'll have more models to paint up for that faction so it'll be Shasvastii first. However, we're still in the first few days and there may be some errors - the fireteams in particular look a bit odd, so I'm waiting to hear back if they can take a Haris team or not.

So, the Combined Army will likely be a bit of a painting project coming up. I've got some half finished bits to finish up first, and will likely get some Shasvastii profiles done to round them out after that. So it's probably a next year thing, but it shouldn't be too hard to get the basics knocked out pretty quickly.

I had a test game of N4 Druze and they seemed pretty good. I don't think much has got worse for them. They'd be fun to run out for six months or so at some point, and I don't need anything painted for them. A few profiles have changed or got a nudge up, which is a bit of a theme, really. I miss Druze, it'd be good to get back to them. There's a bunch of their N4 upgrades I've not gotten to trying out properly yet.

A lot of the Dahshat staples have suffered a bit in the new edition. Their loss of Ghulam snipers hurts a core part of the N4 build I was using for them, and fireteams getting downgraded on top of that is rough. McMurrough isn't as tough, either. There's only a Cateran sniper to be added model wise, and that's not really going to hold me up from giving them a go.

Ikari are sitting in the "some time in the future" box right now. I basically have them due to a big crossover of the models from Druze, and some discounted models. I ran them on a whim once at an N3 tournament without any practice and got absolutely ruined, and they do deserve better.

Qapu Khalqi also need a few bits before I can get them going, but I think they're ahead of Ikari in my brain. I like Haqqislam as a faction, and "QK" have picked up a few new and interesting profiles. Another future project, but one I think I could really put some time into and have fun with.

I've been playing my White Company for a good bit at the end of N4. There's a bunch of new character models that have been added to the faction, which I'll need to get painted up. I'm going to take a break from them, but I expect I'll start to miss them in a bit and want to come back to them soon.

Nomads are the faction I really want to get back to at some point. I want to get them painted first and that's been the real blocker so far. I think they're pretty much queued up after I get vanilla Combined Army done, but that might be a while. So, one for the future...

White Company Brawlers

 

The Brawlers for my White Company that Tesseract Studios painted for me. I accidentally sent bases without fire arc markers, and we only spotted this after they were painted. Stu then fixed it by sculpting the fire arc markers with green stuff.

Brawlers aren't a White Company profile, but they're available as Reinforcements, so they'll turn up from time to time. They get slightly different profiles as Reinforcements, too. For now, though, they're away in the case waiting to deploy.

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 2

 

Day 2 of the LGT, and the mission was Frostbyte, against my buddy Riker playing Hassassin Bahram. I ran the ten order list again, as it had more models capable of surviving the cold.

I split my fireteams at the far ends of the table so it was harder for a Fiday to assassinate everything in one go.

Unfortunately, Riker successfully worked out who my Lieutenant was, and got the hit in, meaning I spent the first turn in Loss of Lieutenant.

My Guija tried to clear the ARO pieces but ended up stunned and damaged. Things didn't improve from here, and I got handily dismantled.

Once McMurrough got into my lines it was pretty much all over, but the game finished 10-1 to Riker, with 251 of his points left up to 0 of mine. Oh dear.

We had another Resilience Operations mission, and this time I was up against vanilla Haqqislam. It was back to the "two John Hawkwoods" list to see if that fared any better.

My Chaksa Longarm got taken out by a Haqq gun fighter, and the Kunai Ninja had to try and stop it. Was this the sole point it was useful? I sadly don't recall.

Weirdly, Taowu went on an absolute tear and took out a whole flank of the Haqq force, pretty much on his own.

I tried to take out a few more Haqq forces, but it was ineffective and my force basically collapsed. The score ended up being 10-5 against me. Could I get a second win for the event in the last game?

So, last game, and a Firefight against Nomads. Time to try and regain some honour...

... it did not go well. An initial attack by the Uberfallkommando damaged the fireteam, but I was able to take out the Chimera to stop being completely overwhelmed. Unfortunately, I just couldn't land a solid hit on the Nomads to take out more points.

In the end, the Gator went on an absolute rampage through my lines, and while I tried to get some points back by taking it out with a shotgun, it managed to stay up, meaning the Nomads finished ahead 10-3.

After five losses and one win, I ended up solidly winning the Wooden Spoon. It turns out taking all the weird profiles that no-one takes leads to you discover that people don't take them for a reason... Still, it was a good way to see off N4, even if N5 has been a little bit held up since.

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 1

 Back at the end of September, I went to the two day Infinity tournament at the LGT. With it being towards the end of the fourth edition of Infinity, I decided I wanted to take a lot of the more 'fringe' profiles from White Company so I'd had a chance to use them. At the time, it wasn't clear if White Company was going to be continuing into the new edition, but it's since been confirmed they're still available.

I was running two lists - the first used a Chaksa Longarm to lead a small fireteam, had John Hawkwood as Lieutenant and Taowu Holomasked as a second John Hawkwood. The second list ran the Guija TAG, and kept to a single combat group of ten models.

Game 1: Unmasking vs Tunguska

First up was Unmasking, and I was paired against a club mate who I'd not played before who was running Tunguska.

My Tiger Soldier dropped in to neutralise the Grenzer sniper who was dominating the field to stop me advancing.

I sent the Chaksa, Hawkwood and Valerya to hit the first console, but as the team approached, a Heckler with a Jammer revealed and isolated Valerya, leaving the team a bit hamstrung. Worse, this was the real Hawkwood, and he got taken out the following turn, leaving me in Loss of Lieutenant.

To try and swing the game back, I sent the Kunai Ninja after the Vostok, but he got caught by another model's ARO, and I didn't really have enough orders left to get to the consoles and the targets. In the end, it was a 9-0 loss for me, but it was good to get my first game ever with a friend.

Game 2: Resilience Operations vs Corregidor

Next up was Resilience Operations against another club mate, running Corregidor. This is a mission where you get your objectives by random card draw. You have different objectives from your opponent, and you don't know what your opponent is trying to do.

The typical Maasai Morans blocked up the centre. I was able to clear some of the Koalas by getting lines of sight to them, but had to be a bit cagey about getting close to the Morans early on as I didn't want to get targeted and hit by guided missiles.

The Tiger Soldier went for the model I suspected was the Lieutenant, but got some unlucky rolls and he got taken out. One of my squads over-extended a little bit and ended up getting completely exploded by the Vostok.

I had trouble pushing forward, and ended up making a run to try and control the centre with Hawkwood, but couldn't get enough points into the zones I needed to score. This left me with a 9-3 loss. I got thoroughly outplayed on positioning, and my opponent really earned his win.

Game 3: Countermeasures vs Druze Bayram Security

The last game of the day was Countermeasures, and I was up against Druze Bayram Security. I decided to take my list with the Guija and a single combat group.

My fireteam got a Repeater onto the Druze remote, immobilised it, and got into cover to try and make it through the next turn...

On the last turn, I sent my ORC Lieutenant up to clear the reaction pieces, but he got shot down... It was all down the the Blade Ops Engineer.

The Blade Ops managed to get the job done, getting some nanobots onto a Doctor to score some of the objective cards.

The Guija then got into gun fight with the Triphammer, and rather embarrassingly lost... But it wasn't enough, and the White Company managed to win the game 6-2.

So, having won one of the three games on the first day, I headed home for some sleep before returning for Day 2. Could I improve my win record on the second day?

White Company Reinforcements

 

Here's another batch of miniatures painted by Tesseract Miniature Studios for my White Company. These are most of the different options I need to play the "Reinforcements" option in the game, though I haven't had a chance to try that game mode yet. It's something that doesn't seem to have taken off when launched, but with the fifth edition held up a bit, maybe I'll see if I can find someone who wants to give it a go.

The Anaconda is a bit of a weak TAG. I picked up a whole bunch of them cheaply during the TAG Raid Kickstarter for the different factions I play. In N4 it's a bit fragile for what it costs, though it might have some utility as a reinforcement profile? Still, completionist brain insisted.

Bounty Hunters! The Motorised Bounty Hunter is for a different game mode, but I've included because that's probably not worth a single post by herself... The other three are all different limited edition Bounty Hunters from different editions of the game I picked up either at the time or through a recent "Happy Days" sale of older models.

So, a Hatail Spec Ops (the model on the left) isn't really a valid profile for Reinforcements or White Company, but I'd picked her up cheap at some point, and Spec Ops models make good proxies for things. At the time I sent this batch off, the non-limited "Samsa" model hadn't come out, so the Hatail will work fine for that.

The other model is a Monstrucker, who is a cheap engineer, and thus a good model to make up points in a small reinforcement contingent. Their reinforcement profile is regular rather than irregular, which brings up their cost, but I've had such success with Monstruckers in other factions that I think it's definitely worth a go.

Diggers have been one of the stand out mercenary profiles in N4 and in a typical fit of organisation, I've basically not used them for most of the edition. These heavily armoured deep space miners have been excellent corner guards, assault pieces and general mischief. White Company can only take them as reinforcements, but I'm planning on taking the profiles for an outing with Druze Bayram Security some time soon...

There's some Brawlers still to come from this batch, but other than that I'm likely holding on for White Company until the new edition drops and I see if there's any new profiles available...

White Company Chaksa Longarms

 

A few more models from White Company painted by Tesseract Miniature Studios. These are Chaksa Longarms, aliens who escaped the control of the Tohaa and now work as mercenaries. In N4 they haven't been the best of profiles, so I'm waiting to find out if they are still going to be in play, and if they get a profile overhaul.

To get this photo, the background book didn't look right at the bottom of the picture, so I propped texture sheet up on some shipping container models I own to get them at a height that looked right. I had to do a bunch of fiddling about with the angle of the scatter terrain so the shadow wasn't landing on the backdrop.

White Company Last Few Bits and Pieces

 

I had a few more miniatures painted for my White Company by Tesseract Miniature Studios for the end of N4. It was a mix of some newer miniatures, niche profiles and filling out some utility pieces. There's more to come - I've got a couple of repairs to do, and I've separated out some miniatures with a different theme that will be in a different batch.

I added a couple of remotes to the commission to round the force out. I already had one of each Dronbot, so was looking to pick duplicates. I went with a second Fugazi and a Sierra. The Fugazi is a cheap repeater remote with a flash pulse that provides a cheap order and potentially a light ARO. Meanwhile, the Sierra is a Total Reaction remote armed with a Heavy Machine Gun. Having the option to take two Sierras gives an option for a relatively strong ARO presence.

The reinforcements update added a few profiles to White Company (after a short delay). White Company gained the Blade Ops and the Blocker. The centre model here is the Blocker, while on either side are different Blade Ops profiles.

The Blade Ops are very elite light infantry, with either a Boarding Shotgun profile that just fights, or an SMG Engineer profile that can either join a fireteam or deploy up the field. The Blocker can't join a fireteam in White Company, and his equipment of an Adhesive Launcher, Nanopulser and Flash Pulse doesn't lend well to a solo attack piece. However, with the Sensor skill and a Hacker profile he could be an option to fill a troop slot that provides a utility piece and back up hacker.

There was recently a limited edition Varangian Guard miniature I picked up, who I thought looked great, so picked him up and included him in the commission.

Finally, we have a Kunai with Shock Marksman Rifle and a Guilang Hacker. The Kunai is quite pricey for what he is, and as a shooting piece is not a particularly good shot. I've not had much success with him so far. The Guilang, meanwhile, means I now have two Guilang models to match the availability in White Company. While in N4 I've mostly relied on the White Company fireteams, I may try using more midfield skirmishers with them in N5.

AoS, Flesh and Blood and some Commission Paints arrive...

 

It's been a busy week again! I managed to get in my first ever game of Age of Sigmar, pitching my Stormcast against a friend's Seraphon.

I also managed to pop down to Spellbound Games who'd had to reschedule a pre-release for Flesh and Blood. It was an event where you get given eight booster packs to make a playable deck, and I had a bunch of fun. The new set are wizards and "runeblades" (fighters wielding magic), with themes of Earth and Lightning. It was an incredible amount of fun, and I got in four games (and lost them all).

I've also had two commission batches back from Tesseract Miniature Studios. This will be just in time to get in a last few games with my White Company before the new edition drops. We're still waiting to hear what changes are happening to factions, so I'm hoping this isn't their last hurrah...